What’s in it
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorAbout Looking
John Berger · 198 pages
This successor to John Berger's Ways of Seeing, written over the last ten years, searches for meaning within and beyond what is looked at. Why do zoos disappoint children? Why do we take snapshots of those we love? How do the media use photographs of agony? When an animal looks us in the eyes, what does that look mean? Berger describes how a sixteenth-century masterpiece he saw in the 1960s com
The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproducibility, and Other Writings on Media
Walter Benjamin · 374 pages
A series of influential essays on the visual arts that were made possible by machines, and the implications for the future of culture.
Travels in Hyperreality
Umberto Eco · 324 pages
Consider the Lobster and Other Essays
David Foster Wallace · 343 pages
Do lobsters feel pain? Did Franz Kafka have a funny bone? What is John Updike's deal, anyway? And what happens when adult-video starlets meet their fans in person? David Foster Wallace answers these questions and more in essays that are enthralling narrative adventures. Whether covering the three-ring circus of a vicious presidential race, plunging into the wars between dictionary writers, or conf
Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs: A Low Culture Manifesto
Chuck Klosterman · 258 pages
"Countless writers and artists have spoken for a generation, but no one has done it quite like Chuck Klosterman. With an exhaustive knowledge of popular culture and an almost effortless ability to spin brilliant prose out of unlikely subject matter, Klosterman attacks the entire spectrum of postmodern America: reality TV, Internet porn, Pamela Anderson, literary Jesus freaks, and the real differen
Mythologies
Roland Barthes · 158 pages
"This new edition of MYTHOLOGIES is the first complete, authoritative English version of the French classic, Roland Barthes's most emblematic work"--
Believing is Seeing: Observations on the Mysteries of Photography
Errol Morris · 323 pages
"Academy Award-wining filmmaker Errol Morris investigates the hidden truths behind a series of documentary photographs. In Believing Is Seeing Academy Award-winning director Errol Morris turns his eye to the nature of truth in photography. In his inimitable style, Morris untangles the mysteries behind an eclectic range of documentary photographs, from the ambrotype of three children found clasped
Wall and Piece
Banksy · 207 pages
From the Publisher: Graffiti artist Banksy decorates streets, walls, bridges and zoos of towns and cities throughout the world. His identity remains unknown but his work is witty, subversive and prolific. And now, he's put together the best of his work in a fully illustrated color volume.
The Art of Cruelty: A Reckoning
Maggie Nelson · 304 pages
Discusses whether the brutal imagery present in reality and entertainment will shock society into a less alienated state and help create a just social order or whether focusing on representations of cruelty makes society more cruel.
A Room of One's Own
Virginia Woolf · 129 pages
A Room of One's Own is an extended essay by Virginia Woolf. First published on 24 October 1929, the essay was based on a series of lectures she delivered at Newnham College and Girton College, two women's colleges at Cambridge University in October 1928. While this extended essay in fact employs a fictional narrator and narrative to explore women both as writers of and characters in fiction, the m
How to Be Alone
Jonathan Franzen · 306 pages
Collection of some of Franzen's essays, including the one known as "the Harper's essay". Some are edited or tweaked from their original printings. A mixture of topics but well-written and enjoyable; Franzen is as thoughtful as ever.
Bad Feminist
Roxane Gay · 360 pages
A collection of essays spanning politics, criticism, and feminism from one of the most-watched young cultural observers of her generation, Roxane Gay. "Pink is my favorite color. I used to say my favorite color was black to be cool, but it is pink, all shades of pink. If I have an accessory, it is probably pink. I read Vogue, and I'm not doing it ironically, though it might seem that way. I once l
Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology
Neil Postman · 222 pages
With characteristic wit and candor, Neil Postman, our most astute and engaging cultural critic, launches a trenchant--and harrowing--warning against the tyranny of machines over man in the late twentieth century. We live in a time when physical well-being is determined by CAT scan results. Facts need the substantiation of statistical study. The human mind needs "deprogramming" while computers c
Reality Hunger: A Manifesto
David Shields · 219 pages
An open call for new literary and other art forms to match the complexities of the twenty-first century.Reality TV dominates broadband. YouTube and Facebook dominate the web. In Reality Hunger: A Manifesto, his landmark new book, David Shields (author of the New York Times best seller The Thing About Life Is That One Day You'll Be Dead) argues that our culture is obsessed with "reality" precis
Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion
Jia Tolentino · 303 pages
The Simpsons and Philosophy: The D'oh! of Homer
William Irwin, Aeon J. Skoble, Mark T. Conard · 304 pages
Dialectic of Enlightenment
Max Horkheimer, Theodor W. Adorno · 192 pages
On Bullshit
Harry G. Frankfurt · 80 pages
Most people are rather confident of their ability to recognize bullshit and to avoid being taken in by it, yet we have no clear understanding of what bullshit is, why there is so much of it, or what functions it serves--and we lack a conscientious appreciation of what it means to us. In other words, as Harry Frankfurt writes, "we have no theory." Frankfurt, one of the world's most influential mora
Outlaw Culture: Resisting Representations
bell hooks · 320 pages
Bell hooks, one of America's leading black intellectuals, is also one of our most clear-eyed and penetrating analysts of culture. Outlaw culture--the culture of the margin, of women, of the disenfranchised, of racial and other minorities--lies at the heart of bell hooks' America. Raising her powerful voice against racism and other forms of oppression in the United States, hooks unlocks the politic
BITCHfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine
Lisa Jervis, Andi Zeisler · 386 pages
Offers an assortment of the most provocative essays, reporting, rants, and raves from Bitch magazine's first ten years, along with new pieces written especially for this collection.
Practices of Looking: An Introduction to Visual Culture
Marita Sturken, Lisa Cartwright · 495 pages
"This introduction to visual culture explores the ways we use and understand images. It looks at painting, photography, film, television, and new media across the realms of art, advertising, news, science, and law. Authors Marita Sturken and Lisa Cartwright present the diverse range of approaches to visual analysis that have emerged in the last few decades, and lead the reader through the key theo
How to Be a Woman
Caitlin Moran · 313 pages
Though they have the vote and the Pill and haven't been burned as witches since 1727, life isn't exactly a stroll down the catwalk for modern women. They are beset by uncertainties and questions: Why are they supposed to get Brazilians? Why do bras hurt? Why the incessant talk about babies? And do men secretly hate them? Caitlin Moran interweaves provocative observations on women's lives with l